Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin Drop what you’re doing and prepare yourself to fall hard for this absorbing story of loss, love and video games. Sam and Sadie connected as kids over a shared love of games like Super Mario and Oregon Trail. The two were virtually inseparable until a falling-out brought … Read more
All That’s Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien It’s 1996, and Ky Tran has left her tiny hometown of Cabramatta and her Vietnamese immigrant community to scratch out a future as a journalist in Melbourne. Then tragedy strikes: Ky’s brother Denny, a star student with a bright future, is brutally murdered in a popular restaurant. Despite … Read more
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley If you’re in the mood for a satisfying, twisty thriller laced with contemporary and traditional Native American culture, Angeline Boulley’s debut novel starts with a bang. Eighteen-year-old Daunis Fontaine is the titular “Firekeeper’sDaughter,” half Ojibwe, half French/Italian/English, and entirely herself. A talented hockey player and aspiring doctor, Daunis has made … Read more
Think Black: A Memoir by Clyde W. Ford Few people have lives as varied and interesting as Bellingham’s own Clyde Ford. In his professional life, he’s been a chiropractor, a psychotherapist and a business owner. He’s studied mind-body healing, African mythology, the environment and history, and he’s channeled these interests into a career as a … Read more
The Book of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly (with Recipes) by Kate Lebo Mixing culinary history, personal reflections and tantalizing trivia, poet and pie aficionado Kate Lebo delves deep into 26 lyrical essays featuring “difficult” fruit — one for each letter of the alphabet — in her first work of nonfiction, … Read more
Monk and Robot series by Becky Chambers In the gentle, hopeful future world of the ‘Monk and Robot’ series by Becky Chambers, Sibling Dex, a tea monk on the planet Panga, and a scatterbrained and lovable robot named Splendid Speckled Mosscap (robots in Panga are named for the first thing their awareness touches on, in … Read more
The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl Maybe it’s a bit of a stretch, but many of us Northwesterners claim Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl as one of our own, even if his life-changing stint as the drummer for Nirvana only lasted four years, and to hear him tell it, he wasn’t … Read more
52 Ways to Nature: Washington: Your Seasonal Guide to a Wilder Year by Lauren Braden Now that the Fourth of July has come and gone, signaling summer has finally arrived to Whatcom County, it’s time to make adventure plans to make the most of each precious weekend. Seattle-based travel writer Lauren Braden’s “52 Ways to … Read more
The Family Chao by Lan Samatha Chang Lan Samantha Chang’s latest novel, “The Family Chao,” centers around a murder, but it’s less of a whodunit than a psychological study of complicated family relationships. The plot is similar to “The Brothers Karamazov,” but you need not be a scholar of 19th-century Russian literature to appreciate this … Read more
Everything Left to Remember: My Mother, Our Memories, and A Journey Through the Rocky Mountains by Steph Jagger Bainbridge Island author Steph Jagger follows up her memoir “Unbound” with “Everything Left to Remember: My Mother, Our Memories, and a Journey Through the Rocky Mountains,” a heart-wrenching yet hopeful recounting of a mother-daughter road trip taken … Read more